“Is anybody here, Barney?” inquired Fagin, speaking, now that
Sikes was looking on, without raising his eyes from the ground.
“Dot a shoul,” replied Barney; whose words, whether they
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came from the heart or not, made their way through the nose.
“Nobody?” inquired Fagin, in a tone of surprise, which perhaps
might mean that Barney was at liberty to tell the truth.
“Dobody but Biss Dadsy,” replied Barney.
“Nancy!” exclaimed Sikes. “Where? Strike me blind, if I don’t
honour that ’ere girl, for her native talents.”
“She’s bid havid a plate of boiled beef id the bar,” replied
Barney.
“Send her here,” said Sikes, pouring out a glass of liquor.
“Send her here.”
Barney looked timidly at Fagin, as if for permission; the Jew
remaining silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he
retired; and presently returned, ushering in Nancy; who was
decorated with the bonnet, apron, basket, and street door key,
complete.
“You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?” inquired Sikes,
proffering the glass.
“Yes, I am, Bill,” replied the young lady, disposing of its
contents; “and tired enough of it I am, too. The young brat’s been
ill and confined to the crib; and—”
“Ah, Nancy dear!” said Fagin, looking up.
Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew’s red eyebrows,
and a half-closing of his deeply-set eyes,—warned Miss Nancy that
she was disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much
importance. The fact is all we need care for here; and the fact is,
that she suddenly checked herself, and with several gracious
smiles upon Mr; Sikes, turned the conversation to other matters.
In about ten minutes’ time, Mr. Fagin was seized with a fit of
coughing; upon which Nancy pulled her shawl over her shoulders,
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and declared it was time to go. Mr. Sikes, finding that he was
walking a short part of her way himself, expressed his intention of
accompanying her; and they went away together, followed, at a
little distance, by the dog, who slunk out of a back-yard as soon as
his master was out of sight.
The Jew thrust his head out of the room door when Sikes had
left it; looked after him as he walked up the dark passage; shook
his clenched fist; muttered a deep curse; and then, with a horrible
grin, reseated himself at the table; where he was soon deeply
absorbed in the interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry.
Meanwhile, Oliver Twist, little dreaming that he was within so
very short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way
to the bookstall. When he got into Clerkenwell, he accidentally
turned down a by-street which was not exactly in his way: but not
discovering his mistake until he had got half-way down it, and
knowing it must lead in the right direction, he did not think it
worth while to turn back; and so marched on, as quickly as he
could, with the books under his arm.
He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he
ought to feel, and how much he would give for only one look at
poor little Dick, who, starved and beaten, might be weeping
bitterly at that very moment, when he was startled by a young
woman screaming out very loud, “Oh, my dear brother!” And he
had hardly looked up to see what the matter was, when he was
stopped by having a pair of arms thrown right round his neck.
“Don’t,” cried Oliver, struggling. “Let go of me. Who is it? What
are you stopping me for?”
The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations
from the young woman who had embraced him, and who had a
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little basket and a street door key in her hand.
“Oh, my gracious!” said the young woman. “I’ve found him! Oh!
Oliver! Oliver! Oh, you naughty boy, to make me suffer such
distress on your account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I’ve found
him. Thank gracious goodness heavins, I’ve found him!” With
these incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst into
another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully hysterical, that a couple
of women who came up at the moment asked a butcher’s boy with
a shiny head of hair anointed with suet, who was also looking on,
whether he didn’t think he had better run for the doctor. To
which, the butcher’s boy, who appeared of a lounging, not to say
indolent disposition, replied that he thought not.
“Oh, no, no, never mind,” said the young woman, grasping
Oliver’s hand; “I’m better now. Come home directly, you cruel
boy! Come!”
“What’s the matter, ma’am?” inquired one of the women.
“Oh, ma’am,” replied the young woman, “he ran away, near a
month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and
respectable people, and went and joined a set of thieves and bad
characters, and almost broke his mother’s heart.”
“Young wretch!” said the woman.
“Go home, do, you little brute,” said the other.
“I’m not,” replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. “I don’t know her. I
haven’t any sister, or father and mother either. I’m an orphan; I
live at Pentonville.”
“Only hear him, how he braves it out!” cried the young woman.
“Why, it’s Nancy!” exclaimed Oliver; who now saw her face for
the first time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.
“You see he knows me!” cried Nancy, appealing to the
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bystanders. “He can’t help himself. Make him come home, there’s
good people, or he’ll kill his dear mother and father, and break my
heart!”
“What the devil’s this?” said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop,
with a white dog at his heels; “young Oliver! Come home to your
poor mother, you young dog! Come home directly.”
“I don’t belong to them. I don’t know them. Help! help!” cried
Oliver, struggling in the man’s powerful grasp.
“Help!” repeated the man. “Yes; I’ll help you, you young rascal!
What books are these? You’ve been a-stealin’ ’em, have you? Give
’em here.” With these words, the man tore the volumes from his
grasp, and struck him on the head.
“That’s right!” cried a looker-on, from a garret window. “That’s
the only way of bringing him to his senses!”
“To be sure!” cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an
approving look at the garret window.
“It’ll do him good!” said the two women.
“And he shall have it, too!” rejoined the man, administering
another blow, and seizing Oliver by the collar. “Come on, you
young villain! Here, Bull’s-eye, mind him, boy! Mind him!”
Weak with recent illness; stupefied by the blows and the
suddenness of the attack; terrified by the fierce growling of the
dog, and the brutality of the man; overpowered by the conviction
of the bystanders that he really was the hardened little wretch he
was described to be; what could one poor child do! Darkness had
set in; it was a low neighbourhood; no help was near; resistance
was useless. In another moment, he was dragged into a labyrinth
of dark, narrow courts, and was forced along them at a pace which
rendered the few cries he dared to give utterance to, wholly
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unintelligible. It was of little moment, indeed, whether they were
intelligible or no; for there was nobody to care for them, had they
been ever so plain.
*****
The gas-lamps were lighted; Mrs. Bedwin was waiting
anxiously at the open door;—the servant had run up the street
twenty times to see if there were any traces of Oliver; and still the
two old gentlemen sat, perseveringly, in the dark parlour, with the
watch between them.
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Chapter 16
Relates What Became Of Oliver Twist, After He Had
Been Claimed By Nancy.
The narrow streets and courts, at length, terminated in a
large open space; scattered about which, were pens for
beasts, and other indications of a cattle-market. Sikes
slackened his pace when they reached this spot, the girl being
quite unable to support any longer the rapid rate at which they
had hitherto walked. Turning to Oliver, he roughly commanded
him to take hold of Nancy’s hand.
“Do you hear?” growled Sikes, as Oliver hesitated, and looked
round.
They were in a dark corner, quite out of the track of passengers.
Oliver saw, but too plainly, that resistance would be of no avail. He
held out his hand, which Nancy clasped tight in hers.
“Give me the other,” said Sikes, seizing Oliver’s unoccupied
hand. “Here, Bull’s-Eye!”
The dog looked up, and growled.
“See here, boy!” said Sikes, putting his other hand to Oliver’s
throat; “if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold him! D’ye mind!”
The dog growled again; and licking his lips, eyed Oliver as if he
were anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without delay.
“He’s as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn’t!” said
Sikes, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious
approval. “Now, you know what you’ve got to expect, master, so
call away as quick as you like; the dog will soon stop that game.
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Get on, young ’un!”
Bull’s-eye wagged his tail in acknowledgement of this unusually
endearing form of speech; and, giving vent to another admonitory
growl for the benefit of Oliver, led the way onward.
It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might
have been Grosvenor Square, for anything Oliver knew to the
contrary. The night was dark and foggy. The lights in the shops
could scarcely struggle through the heavy mist, which thickened
every moment and shrouded the streets and houses in gloom;
rendering the strange place still stranger in Oliver’s eyes; and
making his uncertainty the more dismal and depressing.
They had hurried on a few paces, when a deep church-bell
struck the hour. With its first stroke, his two conductors stopped,
and turned their heads in the direction whence the sound
proceeded.
“Eight o’clock, Bill,” said Nancy, when the bell ceased.
“What’s the good of telling me that; I can hear it, can’t I!”
replied Sikes.
“I wonder whether they can hear it,” said Nancy.
“Of course they can,” replied Sikes. “It was Bartlemy time
when I was shopped; and there warn’t a penny trumpet in the fair,
as I couldn’t hear the squeaking on. Arter I was locked up for the
night, the row and din outside made the thundering old jail so
silent, that I could almost have beat my brains out against the iron
plates of the door.”
“Poor fellows!” said Nancy, who still had her face turned
towards the quarter in which the bell had sounded. “Oh, Bill, such
fine young chaps as them!”
“Yes; that’s all you women think of,” answered Sikes. “Fine
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young chaps! Well, they’re as good as dead, so it don’t matter
much.”
With this consolation, Mr. Sikes appeared to repress a rising
tendency to jealousy? and, clasping Oliver’s wrist more firmly, told
him to step out again.
“Wait a minute!” said the girl; “I wouldn’t hurry by, if it was
you that was coming out to be hung, the next time eight o’clock
struck, Bill. I’d walk round and round the place till I dropped, if
the snow was on the ground, and I haven’t a shawl to cover me.”
“And what good would that do?” inquired the unsentimental
Mr. Sikes. “Unless you could pitch over a file and twenty yards of
good stout rope, you might as well be walking fifty mile off, or not
walking at all, for all the good it would do me. Come on, and don’t
stand preaching there.”
The girl burst into a laugh; drew her shawl more closely round
her; and they walked away. But Oliver felt her hand tremble, and,
looking up in her face as they passed a gas lamp saw that it had
turned a deadly white.
They walked on, by little frequented and dirty ways, for a full
half-hour, meeting very few people, and those appearing from
their looks to hold much the same position in society as Mr. Sikes
himself. At length they turned into a very filthy narrow street,
nearly full of old-clothes shops: the dog running forward, as if
conscious that there was no further occasion for his keeping on
guard, stopped before the door of a shop that was closed and
apparently untenanted. The house was in a ruinous condition, and
on the door was nailed a board, intimating that it was to let, which
looked as if it had hung there for many years.
“All right,” cried Sikes, glancing cautiously about.
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Nancy stooped below the shutters; and Oliver heard the sound
of a bell. They crossed to the opposite side of the street and stood
for a few moments under a lamp. A noise, as if a sash-window
were gently raised, was heard; and soon afterwards the door softly
opened. Mr. Sikes then seized the terrified boy by the collar with
very little ceremony; and all three were quickly inside the house.
The passage was perfectly dark. They waited, while the person
who had let him in chained and barred the door.
“Anybody here?” inquired Sikes.
“No,” replied a voice, which Oliver thought he had heard
before.
“Is the old ’un here?” asked the robber.
“Yes,” replied the voice; “and precious down in the mouth he
has been. Won’t he be glad to see you? Oh, no!” The style of this
reply, as well as the voice which delivered it, seemed familiar to
Oliver’s ears; but it was impossible to distinguish even the form of
the speaker in the darkness.
“Let’s have a glim,” said Sikes, “or we shall go breaking our
necks, or treading on the dog. Look after your legs if you do!
That’s all.”
“Stand still a moment, and I’ll get you one,” replied the voice
The receding footsteps of the speaker were heard; and, in another
minute, the form of Mr. John Dawkins, otherwise the Artful
Dodger, appeared. He bore in his right hand a tallow candle stuck
in the end of a cleft stick.
The young gentleman did not stop to bestow any other mark of
recognition upon Oliver than a humorous grin; but, turning away,
beckoned the visitors to follow him down a flight of stairs. They
crossed an empty kitchen, and, opening the door of a low, earthy-
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smelling room, which seemed to have been built in a small backyard were received with a shout of laughter.
“Oh, my wig, my wig!” cried Master Charles Bates from whose
lungs the laughter had proceeded; “here he is! oh cry, here he is!
Oh, Fagin, look at him! Fagin do look at him! I can’t bear it; it is
such a jolly game, I can’t bear it. Hold me, somebody, while I laugh
it out.”
With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth, Master Bates laid
himself flat on the floor, and kicked convulsively for five minutes,
in an ecstasy of facetious joy. Then jumping to his feet, he
snatched the cleft stick from the Dodger; and, advancing to Oliver,
viewed him round and round; while the Jew, taking off his nightcap, made a great number of low bows to the bewildered boy. The
Artful, meantime, who was of a rather saturnine disposition, and
seldom gave way to merriment when it interfered with business,
rifled Oliver’s pockets with steady assiduity.
“Look at his togs, Fagin!” said Charley, putting the light so
close to his new jacket as nearly to set him on fire. “Look at his
togs! Superfine cloth, and the heavy swell cut! Oh, my eye, what a
game! And his books, too! Nothing but a gentleman, Fagin!”
“Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear,” said the Jew,
bowing with mock humility. “The Artful shall give you another
suit, my dear, for fear you should spoil that Sunday one. Why,
didn’t you write, my dear, and say you were coming. We’d have got
something warm for supper.”
At this, Master Bates roared again; so loud, that Fagin himself
relaxed, and even the Dodger smiled; but as the Artful drew forth
